18 comments:

I'm planning on doing a mass mailing to the Justices of the Supreme Court, various Court of Appeals, Senators and Governors, journalists and professors. Any feedback before I do that would be huge. Thanks ahead of time.

Saint Croix, I love love love your posts, and your open letter is compelling, but this is not the week to go after Roe v. Wade. Your timing is all off. This week is all about the Affordable Care Act. This is huge, especially for a small-federal-government, local-control advocate like me.

PS Saint, not working in Chrome. Tried turning on Javascript and it didn't fix it.

Had to run it in IE.

My one suggestion is that you soften paragraphs where you address him directly.

Material such as

Perhaps you are a fan of the work of Peter Singer, the infamous bioethicist of the Ivy League, who argues that children as old as two should be defined as commodities by the state. I have no idea. You've written an entire book (A Matter of Interpretation) about how Supreme Court Justices should follow obvious understandings of words. So I would think you would be rather embarrassed that you and your Court define corporations as people while you define babies as commodities.

won't win him to your POV.

I'd try something like, I'm sure you are no adherent of bioethicist Peter Singer, who argues that children as old as two should be defined as commodities by the state, a viewpoint close to that expressed by the Nazis...

I know you're as outraged by state-run decisions of life and death as I and many others are, but keep in mind you want to make sure you have a convert.

More carrot, less stick.

Hope it helps.

PS Schmoe is probably right. Assuming we have a new Congress and Administration - which will appoint 2 - 4 new Justices - that is the time to send the letter.

edutcher, my hope is that by smacking Scalia around, I'll win some points with the others. Scalia is very smug and I'm sure his personality can aggravate. (Kinda like mine!) And while we can't really blame Scalia for any of this, his dissents have hardly covered himself in glory. So by shaming Scalia, in public, I hope to show the entire Court that none of them are innocent of this shit.

As I see it, in reversing Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court has to admit error. Not just error but baby-killing error. And to do that it might be helpful to show the viciousness in Scalia's jurisprudence. It might give Roberts (or even Kennedy) some ideas for how to say "we all screwed up."

Joe, that's very good advice. Timing is so critical! I'll have to think about when I should send it.

We've had a lot of cardinals this year. I love how the males' call sounds like a laser from Star Wars. I always feel like I should dodge for my car when I walk out of the house and hear the 'PEEOWWN! PEEOWNN! PEEOWNN!'

We had a pair of cardinals show up in our yard this week. One of them decided he wanted to move into our house, and started flying into various ( closed ) windows. He actually managed to shatter one of our storm windows, but did not seem to do himself any harm.

That's the second storm window we've had broking by a bird. About 8 years ago we had one taken out by a falcon. The falcon died in the process.

Being a man of science, I am constantly on the lookout for signs and omens. This posting, along with my seeing a car on I75 today between Chattanooga and Knoxville with a University of Louisville license plate, leads me to the tentative conclusion that we WILL be Kentucky on Saturday. Maybe. Either that, or they'll beat us. Signs and omens can be so hard to interpret.